Third time for Tesla

Tesla is not giving up at the Texas Capitol. In fact, it’s getting more ambitious.

Instead of looking to create any kind of carve-out that favors the high-end electric car maker, legislation filed Friday would simply allow any vehicle manufacturer to sell directly to Texans — bypassing the middleman dealers — in Tesla’s biggest challenge yet to a longstanding state ban on the practice.

The proposal “will allow manufacturers of vehicles any weight, class, size or shape to sell direct to consumers,” said state Rep. Jason Isaac, the Dripping Springs Republican who filed the legislation in the House. “It’s a simple, free-market bill to allow that to happen.”

State Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, is carrying the legislation in the upper chamber. He and Isaac filed their bills, Senate Bill 2093 and House Bill 4236, on Friday with hours to go until the deadline to submit legislation for the biennial session.

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Dealerships have long argued the Texas direct-sales ban protects customers by ensuring that they have locations where they can buy cars across the state, not just in highly populated cities where manufacturers, if given the chance to sell directly, might otherwise set up shop. The opposition to such legislation also has an ally in Gov. Greg Abbott, who said after the 2015 session that Texas’ automobile sector seems to be “working quite well the way that it is.”

“Tesla’s legislation seeks to unravel the entire franchised dealer system in Texas, in favor of direct sales of motor vehicles by a manufacturer,” Texas Automobile Dealers Association president Bill Wolters said in a statement Friday. “SB 2093 and the reduced competition it will bring about in the new vehicle sales and service market will come at the expense of Texans and Texas.”

“No other vehicle manufacturer is seeking to change the law, and Tesla doesn’t need to either,” Wolters added.

For Isaac, the issue goes beyond Tesla. He recalled having something of an epiphany after recently touring an Amazon facility in Texas and seeing robots zip around with pallets: What if similar technology could one day be used to haul containers up and down the state’s highways?

“I really believe in the next 10 to 20 years we are going to see a complete change in our transportation system,” Isaac said, “and the last thing I want is any barrier to that technology being available.”

See here for previous Tesla blogging. I side with them on this, though as before I don’t expect them to overcome the resistance to their business model. (Neither does bill author Rep. Isaac, but I agree with his assertion that it’s worth having the conversation.) I love how Greg Abbott has sided with the legacy system here. It’s an apt summation of his vision and purpose. Anyway, as with driverless cars, this has been going on since 2013. It’s beginning to feel like a tradition making note of these bills each session. I just hope it’s a tradition that eventually has an end.